Very early in the Church's history as early as the time of the New Testament various teachings of the church became twisted and distorted. This happened not only at the hands of outsiders, but also from within. It was very important then as it is today to recognize such teachings and to respond effectively and faithfully, in order to follow Christ's command to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)
False teachings had far reaching effects on the church. The content of various teachings, and the way that Christians responded to these attacks, will be central in this post and the coming ones. But throughout history "new" versions of some of the most ancient of false teachings continued to challenge the church, as they do even today. Today lets look at three influential kinds of teaching.
Most stubbornly pervasive from New Testament times and into today's world is something that historians now call Gnosticism (from the Greek word for knowledge, "gnosis"). Among the primary teachings of this way of looking at life are the following:
Salvation is by knowledge, usually a secret form. Christians influenced by Gnosticism saw Jesus primarily as a divine (not fully human) teacher of this saving kind of knowledge.
There is a great gulf between "matter" and "spirit". Usually the spirit and spiritual things are seen as unequivocally good, and often anything physical is bad, or a hindrance to one's highest spiritual development, or, at best, not very important.
Gnosticism allows for enormous differences in matters of morality. Since physical and spiritual things were worlds apart from each other, some Gnostics counseled not indulging the body at all, while others said it didn't make any difference what you did physically, because God cared only about the spirit.
The church isn't very important compared to the individual.
A spiritual elite supposedly had knowledge of the true spiritual nature of things. They often classified people according to whether they were "spiritual" or merely "carnal."
When Gnosticism came into close contact with Christianity, the tendency was to promote such basic distortions as: Jesus is divine, but not human; salvation does not come from the Cross, but from setting one's spirit free, so Jesus becomes a teacher and example of salvation, but not in a strict sense the Savior. Also, there is a different concept of sin (lack of spiritual knowledge, rather than playing God). In these ways, Gnosticism was (and is) a direct threat to our understanding of the center of Christianity, the person and work of Jesus Christ. (The gospel of Thomas is gnostic)
Marcionism was a very influential form of Gnosticism. IT is named after a wealthy man from a city on the Black Sea in Asia Minor (present day Turkey), who joined the Church in Rome c. A.D. 140. He held most of the Gnostic views stated above, and in A.D. 144 was excommunicated from Rome and started his own church, with the idea: Jesus divine but not human was not born, but appeared fully grown at Capernaum in A.D. 29.
Jesus never suffered on the Cross, but only appeared to.
The god of the Old Testament, a crass, nationalistic "lesser" god, is not the same as the God of the New revealed by Jesus. a God of mercy and love.
Marcion was one of the first to draw up a canon of the New Testament (list of accepted books). He totally omitted the Old Testament from his Bible, and thinking that Paul was the only apostle who properly understood Jesus, included only ten letters of Paul plus the Gospel of Luke. The Marcionite Church survived for centuries, especially in the Orient (Arabia, Armenia, Egypt, etc.). Montanism is an example of taking one aspect of Christian revelation to the extreme, and adding to it. Montanus, a man from central Asia Minor who lived about the same time as Marcion, taught theat he was the "incarnation" of the Holy Spirit. His movement, which lasted several centuries, stressed highly disciplined, ascetic Christian living, manifestations of the Spirit such as speaking in tongues, and a belief in the imminent end of the world. He taught that he (and two prophetesses!) were passive instruments of the Holy Spirit. Montanus was condemned by the earliest synods (gatherings) of bishops of which we have record.
My question, how should Christians respond to false teachings these and countless other varieties? In regard to any specific teaching. three principal options are: reject it out of hand; have nothing to do with it. Swallow it all. Take it very seriously, but know where you stand.
The key result of false teachings in early Church History was for the Church to spell out more clearly its basic beliefs. In the end distortions of christian truth has occurred since earliest times. We need to be sharp theologians and know where we stand. Proclaiming the message of scripture and presenting its theology clearly are continual and essential tasks of the church. If we back away from our theological challenge, then humanly speaking, it probably will and have been destroyed.
God Bless You and this Ministry!!
